


Back to Christie Road

by girlcalledkill



Category: Bandom, Green Day, Real Person Fiction
Genre: 1990s, Angst, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Flirting, Awkward Sexual Situations, Awkward Tension, California, Coming of Age, Developing Relationship, Drama, F/M, Humor, Mild Sexual Content, Platonic Relationships, Pre-Relationship, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Second-Hand Embarrassment, Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll, Teenage Drama, Teenage Rebellion, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-03-22 09:04:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13760790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlcalledkill/pseuds/girlcalledkill
Summary: Kelly Burns is safe. She lives inside a bubble of her parents making, and it consists of church and school and not much else. After an experiment with reckless behavior, she's landed in community service, and she's introduced to a world of people that might just make that bubble burst.





	1. An Honest Mistake

It started with a talk.

And maybe I didn’t realize where that talk would lead. I think I was just lonely and sad and I think maybe he knew that, and that’s what made this so easy for him, almost as easy as sneaking away when the cops showed up and leaving me red handed on the side of an abandoned building, an abandoned building I didn’t even know existed until he took me there to make out in the middle of the night after my parents fell asleep. Have you ever heard the saying, “caught with your pants down”? More like caught with your top off. Definitely more like that. 

He told me he was going to check out where that noise was coming from and he never came back and the next thing I knew I was half naked in a spotlight with my hands up hoping nobody got trigger happy and literally killed me when all I was trying to do was lose my virginity. I am seventeen years old and it was a last ditch effort, he’s good looking enough and time is running out before college, I cannot be the only virgin on campus, I just cannot do that to myself. He got my top off and my jeans unbuttoned when the trees started to rustle and all of a sudden I’m surrounded by the night shift equivalent of mall cops trying not to get shot.

My first thought was actual, physical death. My second thought was that my dad was definitely going to find out about this, and my third thought was a significantly more painful emotional death that would probably lead to the physical death. My dad, you see, is only a radio dispatcher away from the mall cops. And I thought maybe these would be Cool Cops, the kind that give you a warning and let you go, but I, Master of None, left my license in my purse that I didn’t take with me for my trip down the drainpipe to the abandoned building, and had no identification whatsoever except the chipped tooth they would need to look up in my dental records after they discover my charred remains once my mother gets her hands on me.

They kept the lights on me while I scrambled to find my top, and then they handcuffed me and took me into the station and told me about all the serial killers and molesters that prowl the woods at night and how stupid I am to just be out there naked and alone but I wasn’t actually naked and alone, I just wasn’t going to tell them that because I am not a snitch or a coward and apparently Jimmy from Berkeley is both. I’ll give you one guess as to who was sitting at the station when I got there ready to tell the cops all about my diabolical virginity plan, because someone, not naming any names (Jimmy from Berkeley) was apprehended running down the street in a rather sketchy fashion and when I showed up seething in handcuffs he sung like a fucking canary.

But that’s not even the fun part. 

The fun part is when they hear who my dad is, after they handcuff me to a bench in a holding cell for trespassing and breaking and entering and attempted fornication, after they set my bail and tell me about my court date and watch me cry because I have never been arrested before and I am so beyond dead, it is two thirty in the morning oh my God why, and now they’re watching me snotty cry and take huge gasping breaths and I see the shadow of pity on Officer Mall Cop’s face when he asks if he can call my parents to pick me up and I cry harder when I tell them who my dad is and I see the shock on their stupid faces and maybe just a little regret because how did they not recognize me, wasn’t I at the Christmas party???

When my dad shows up it’s half past three and his face is bright red and he doesn’t talk to anyone, he signs papers and I hear the pen flying across the dotted lines, they waive my bail and offer to cancel the court date but dear old dad, the embodiment of The Law, insists they keep it, insists I am given a fair trial for my crimes, including but not limited to attempted fornication, which is not real in the eyes of the law but is the offense I will be grounded for the most severely. And on the ride home my dad is silent and I am crying and we stay that way for a couple of weeks. 

It’s the morning of court and I’m wearing tights and a pencil skirt and yes, I’m crying a little bit because ok, I cry a lot, and my mother is sitting next to me and her leg won’t stop shaking and my dad doesn’t show up for the shame of it all and I’ve convinced myself I am going to federal prison and Jimmy from Berkeley is sitting two rows ahead of us and I’m glaring at the back of his head because it’s his stupid boy fault I ended up here to begin with, him and his stupid boy tongue down the back of my throat and his stupid boy guitar, leering at me from the corner of Telegraph Ave when all I was doing was avoiding that one class with the project I didn’t do. As my dad says, or yells, really, I got “charmed outta my pants by a gutter boy” and “this is what I get”.

He didn’t even get into my pants and that’s what I’m thinking about when they call my case number and I walk up to the table in front of the judge with trembling hands and I’m sweating profusely and the tights are riding up and he’s rattling off my list of wrongdoings and I think my mom is crying now because she also thinks I’m going to federal prison and she’ll have to visit me on Sundays after church so she can tell me in person that orange is not my color. I plead guilty, obviously, and they keep rambling and I’m wondering what Jimmy from Berkeley thinks of my pencil skirt and then I’m snapped out of this blissful break in reality by the announcement that I will be receiving two hundred hours of community service and my mother starts crying harder, almost like she wishes I had just gone to prison instead of being so visibly a degenerate. 

And that brings us here, to the first Saturday of the month, and the gentle shriek of my mother informing me it is time to wake up.


	2. Down the Drainpipe to the Train Tracks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kelly meets a friendly stranger.

“Coffee stunts your growth.”

It’s six o’clock in the morning. My left eye has not even opened yet, it is still cemented shut by sleep and the bit of mascara I didn’t take off before I sobbed into my pillow, after my mother came and sat on the edge of my bed and told me horror stories about the other convicts I would be picking up trash with on the side of the train tracks, and she had this look in her eyes like she just couldn’t believe her only daughter, was one of them. I, Breaking and Entering Trespasser Girl, would be required to complete my community service to have the charges dropped from my record (because I have a record now), which means the next twenty five Saturdays of my life will be spent dutifully spearing trash and shoving it inside my trusty garbage bag with my fellow criminals. There was a great to do about this, because my mother did not want to be seen dropping me off at Christie Road, which is typically where the Bad Kids smoke pot and make out between the hours of midnight and sunrise. I have never been there, on account of I am a wet blanket virgin with the chief of police as my father and the recent rumblings of my first ever rebellion landed me in jail, so.

Nobody had ever wanted to watch me shimmy down a drainpipe before Jimmy from Berkeley. I’ve dated before, yeah, but it’s always been supervised and curfewed and generally boring. But I skipped English one day, I didn’t do a project (I hear you drop the ball a little bit when you’re depressed but you can’t be depressed with the Lord in your heart so says my mother, so clearly that’s not the case here) and I spent the class wandering through Berkeley, which I can only ever do if I’m by myself, and he was just… there. And I was there, and we were there together for a minute too long. And now I’m a delinquent.

Jimmy from Berkeley has bad tattoos and sad boy eyes and he plays shitty acoustic covers of songs I’ve never heard on his acoustic guitar. He smokes cigarettes and reads weird, old books and I’m pretty sure he does the kind of drugs I’ve never actually seen in person but I like that about him, I like that he’s dangerous and different. Looking back at my dating history is a lot like a church camp scrapbook. There’s a lot of tight smiles and combed hair and boys my mom told me would be just lovely, just perfect for me because she knows his parents and we grew up together so of course, we should do lunch. I’ve been countlessly pecked on the cheek and on one occasion felt up in a rose garden (over the shirt) but that’s about as exciting as it got until Jimmy from Berkeley put his tongue in my mouth.

“Kelly, did you hear me?”

It occurs to me I am paused mid pour with the mug on the counter and the coffee pot in my hand.

“No, sorry.”

My mother’s eyes are red from crying. 

“Coffee,” she stops, inhales, it’s just all too much, “stunts your growth.”

I’m looking into her eyes as I pour the coffee into the mug and bring it up to my lips. She watches me in abject horror. 

“What happened to you?” she whimpers, and there is a slight stabbing sensation in the general area of where my heart is supposed to be. It’s feeling a little hollowed out these days.

“It’s just coffee,” I mutter. This is the moment my father chooses to sweep into the kitchen. We fall silent. I am less than a foot away from him as he pours his own coffee into his mug, the one that says Number One Dad, you know, the one my dead brother bought him. My dead brother never would have done this, that’s what they’re thinking with their eyes on the mug, but he used to do this all the time. He just never got caught.

I’m not gonna tell them that, though.

My dad is not going to talk. Not to me, at least. He hasn’t said a word since the night of my arrest, and that’s almost three weeks ago at this point. The time between being arrested and court consisted of my going to school and coming straight home to my room, where I lay in bed and stare at the ceiling and contemplate all of the missteps that led to this great fall, and he stomps around in the hallway outside my door to let me know he’s there, patrolling, and my mother (who removed the lock from the bedroom door for this purpose) forces light into my room to bring me meals I don’t eat. Nobody mentions Greg, my dead brother, their dead son, but he weighs heavily on our minds when I do something uncharacteristically ill informed, we all wonder what he would say, how he would react, if I would have acted differently had he been not dead. But he is. So we wonder over coffee and shared silence, we wonder when my dad gets up and leaves for work, we keep on wondering as my mother loads me into the car and we drive to Christie Road so she can drop me off to pick up trash, and I stop wondering when I see the small group of people standing around in neon orange vests because my stomach drops and I’m too busy panicking to wonder.

She stops the car and inhales sharply again, I’m pretty sure she’s going to cry, and if she cries I’m crying so I get out without a word and slam the door behind me. The small conglomerate of orange clad assholes glance over at me. They all look tired and bored. I am clearly the youngest one here. The officer on duty waves me over. He’s holding a clipboard. I keep my eyes on the ground as I walk towards him, avoiding the stare of the others. It’s a little cold and I zip my jacket.

“Good morning, Kelly!”

Oh, God. It’s Officer Don. I’ve known him since I was five and he’s blowing my cover of aloofness on my first day of community service. Everyone who wasn’t staring before is staring now. Someone snickers.  
“Hi, Don,” I mumble. He laughs a little bit and hands me an orange vest, which I pull over my head.

“Can’t be Don here, it’s Officer Bell to you,” he says with a wink.

And I force a smile because this is the most significantly embarrassing interaction I have ever had and it is happening here in front of all of my new criminal friends.

He checks my name off the clipboard. “Alrighty, looks like everyone’s here. Get in a line and we’ll get you all started.”

We shuffle into a line, us and our orange smocks, waiting for pokers and trash bags. I look up at the sky and briefly request that God strikes me down, but I do not think he is listening. My prayer is interrupted by a tap on the shoulder. I jump, then turn around, and see a blonde boy with tired eyes who can’t be much older than me.

“Is this your first time?” he asks in a near whisper as the line edges forward.

I have a renewal of fear. “How can you tell?”

“Cops don’t get that happy when they see a regular. He knows you from somewhere else.”

I stare at him blankly.

Very observant, this one.

“I’m Mike,” he says, and offers me his hand.

“Kelly,” I say, and I take it.

And I didn’t know it then, but Mike and I were in it for the long haul.


	3. The Gang's All Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kelly meets the boys behind the names.

Mike is a musician, he tells me as we stroll along the train tracks collecting trash, and his band is between tours right now. I ask him if this is typically how he spends his free time and he laughs. I stab a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon with my poker and shove it inside my garbage bag. Mike stabs another. There’s a lot of beer cans out here, and when I make that comment Mike tells me he and his friends are responsible for most of them. I glare at him. He shrugs. We pick up more trash. 

So on and so forth.

We pass two Saturdays like this, quiet small talk while spearing garbage together on the side of the train tracks. He talks about his band, I talk about… Nothing, really. I never really noticed how boring I am until I met Mike. It’s funny how you can grow up in the same place as someone and have a totally different life. My parents never let me hang out with people like him, or anyone, really. I spend a lot of time in my room, listening to records, reading. Daydreaming. I do a lot of daydreaming. On Sundays we go to church and then we do lunch after church and then I do more daydreaming. I don’t really have many friends. And honestly, community service with Mike is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.

“So, you never told me,” he says one morning while we’re waiting for our supplies, “how’d you end up here? You seem so…”

Boring. He wants to say boring.

“....Nice.”

That’s kind of him.

I sigh. “Breaking and entering.”

He raises his eyebrows.

“And trespassing.”

“Really?” he asks, impressed.

“Really.”

“Bet your folks took that well.”

I laugh. “We don’t talk about it. Or about anything, really. It’s been pretty quiet since it happened.”

Mike is twenty and lives with his friends in Berkeley. He doesn’t have to worry about his parents dropping him off at community service every Saturday. He just shows up with his hands in his pockets, humming.

“What about you?” I ask him after we find a place out of earshot. Officer Don has taken to eyeing me curiously since he realized I’ve made a friend. It’s been a source of humor for Mike and I mostly, but I would absolutely die if he told my mother. 

“I got caught with pot,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “Wasn’t even my pot. I was picking up for my friend, he sells it. He’s pretty pissed.”

“He’s pissed you got caught for him?” I ask incredulously. Mike laughs a little bit. “I don’t see him cleaning up fucking beer cans at seven in the morning…”

“They’re his beer cans, too,” Mike snorts, spearing a can of Blatz. “Anything Blatz is Billie Joe.”

“What kind of name is that?”

 

“His mom’s from Oklahoma,” he offers. I nod, pretend to care.

“Oh.”

Mike has a lot of friends, and they all have weird names, like Eggplant and Cometbus and Billie Joe. He asks me about my friends and I hesitate just long enough for him to get embarrassed for both of us, and then we change the subject. 

“Burns!”

I look up at the sound of my name. Officer Don is standing with hands on his hips, watching me intently. Mike offers a low whistle with his eyes on the ground.

“You’re in trouublee…”

“Shut up,” I mutter, but my cheeks are burning red because I think I actually might be, and really how much more trouble can I cause here? Isn’t the place where I’m supposed to be rectifying the trouble? Isn’t this where trouble comes to die?

I wade through my fellow convicts, all immersed in their own quiet conversations and their own bags of trash, to Officer Don, who offers a tight smile. He looks over my shoulder at Mike, who is doing a fantastic impression of someone who is not at all eavesdropping. 

“How you doin’ today, Kel?” he asks once Mike starts whistling to himself.

Officer Don has taken to calling me by my last name so I don’t feel too special. Or maybe so I fit in with all my new friends.

“I’m good---”

“Listen, I know… I know things have been hard for you guys recently....”

Oh no.

Oh God no.

“....and I know you’re a good kid who made a mistake, it happens. Especially with everything you’ve been through,” he finishes, and my lip twitches, and we both ignore it. “I promised your dad I’d keep an eye on you out here, and I wanna make sure you don’t… get too comfortable.”

He’s looking over my shoulder at Mike again. 

“I’m not---”

“That kid you’ve been talking to, Pritchard? He’s a drug dealer.”

Well, I think to myself, technically he is not a drug dealer, technically he got caught in transit to a drug dealer, but I keep this thought quiet.

“He’s nice,” I say defensively. I sound like I’m seven, and Officer Don sighs.

“Just be careful, okay?”

I tell him I will and when I turn I roll my eyes and march right back over to Mike, who waits to ask me what just happened until Officer Don removes us from his line of vision. 

“Be careful?” Mike scoffs as he passive aggressively stabs at the dirt. “What’s he think, I’m gonna kidnap you or something?”

We laugh, but I can tell he’s put off by the warning, and we spent the next couple of hours in awkward silence. It’s true, Mike and I are from pretty different corners of town. I know for sure we wouldn’t have met if it hadn’t been for court mandated community service, but I like him and I like talking to him and I’m sad when the time for the day runs out and he hasn’t said much other than the occasional dumb joke. We’re turning in our pokers and orange vests and I still haven’t found a way to compensate for the stale silence between us. I spend a couple minutes wondering what I can do to make it better and then I realize that my mother is late.

Now, this was strange for a variety of reasons, one of which being that Nancy Burns is never late. I have a brief vision of her car head first in a ditch and shake it off, assuming she’s with her church lady book club, probably crying into someone’s shoulder about her delinquent daughter and her dead son. I cross my arms and sigh and watch everyone filter out, including Officer Don, who offers to stay and wait with me but I shake him off, lie and say Nancy told me she would be running late today. Mike is already walking away at this point, having given me a very awkward half wave goodbye, but he happens to turn, and he happens to see me standing beside the train tracks with my arms crossed by myself, and he pauses. 

“Did your mom forget about you?” he calls back to me as he fumbles a cigarette out of the pack he keeps in his back pocket. I am the first person picked up, very promptly at get-in-the-car o’clock. It’s very out of character for Nancy to be even a minute late, but I am grateful for her lapse in memory. I have not been permitted to be alone in open spaces in quite some time.

I shrug. I’m still not sure what to say to Mike. He’s on his way back towards me now, and he seems a little more relaxed now that our warden is gone.

“I’ll wait with you,” he says as he lights his cigarette with a bent book of matches. 

I open my mouth to tell him he doesn’t have to but he sees it and waves me off. A couple seconds of continued silence pass between us as I panic to myself about my mother pulling the Volvo up and seeing me standing next to a cigarette smoking boy with no sleeves. 

“I’m sorry,” I suddenly blurt, and Mike looks at me with a mix of amusement and alarm, “about what Officer Don.. Bell said about you. I don’t think you’re trouble.”

He laughs, flicks the ash off his cigarette. “Don’t apologize. Some people are just judgemental like that. I’m used to it.”

“I’m sorry, actually,” he continues, “that everyone around you treats you like a little kid.”

“I am a kid,” I say, and it comes out flat and dumb and he laughs again.

“You said you’ll be eighteen soon, right?”

“Yeah..”

 

“That’s not a kid, that’s an adult. Which means you can start making your own decisions. Your parents can’t control you forever.”

I have a response to this somewhere but it collides against my teeth and I swallow it with the wave of panic that crashes over me when I hear a car pulling up. 

“Chill out, it’s not for you. It’s for me.”

There’s a sudden screech of tires and I jump. Whoever is driving this car is racing right towards us. Mike, who hasn’t noticed I’m hovering two feet above my skin, rolls his eyes and keeps dragging on his cigarette as if daring the driving to hit him. There’s music blaring through every open window, something loud and fast and heavy with guitars. Someone is screaming from the backseat but I can’t hear what he’s saying over the music, and the driver starts yelling back as he whips the wheel around and skids to a stop right in front of us. My heart is pounding, my pathetic little life flashing before my eyes. Mike sighs.

“Hey baby,” the driver winks, tossing his arm out the window to caress the side of the car. “You feelin’ lonely?”

I don’t even notice my mouth is open. The driver has green hair slicked back with what looks like days of grease. There’s a strange, manic look in his eye and he’s wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. Mike, however, is entirely unphased. 

“Ask him how much!”

This comes from the backseat, and it’s followed by a dumb, snort of a laugh. I can’t see the person speaking but I assume he is in a similar state of disarray. I jump again when the sound of a fist hitting the inside of the trunk sounds, followed by muffled yelling. 

“Is there someone---” I whisper furtively, but nobody acknowledges me.

“Hostages!” the driver cries, slamming on the horn. It echoes around the train tracks. I will drop dead if Nancy drives up. I will actually cease to exist.

“Who’s in the trunk?” Mike asks, and it’s the most casual thing in the world, just a day in the park. On command, the trunk door pops open and the hostage falls out, gasping for air. He’s small, small enough to fit in a trunk, I guess, and when he stands up I notice he’s not much taller than I am. He’s a head of dreadlocks and a crooked nose ring with bloodshot, tired eyes. 

“Fuck you!” he yells, aiming a swift kick to the bumper. His voice is bigger than his body. The driver turns the music up. 

“I’m sorry, WHAT---”

Mike takes this opportunity to look at me apologetically.

“So, uh… These are my friends.”


	4. Dreadlocks and Green Hair and Cometbus, Oh My!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kelly wonders.

“... These are your friends,” I repeat, still dazed by their collectively dramatic entrance. Dreadlocks and Green Hair are bickering over blazing guitars and whoever’s hiding in the backseat is laughing to himself. It makes sense, I guess. These seem like the kind of people who leave mountains of beer cans in their wake.

“That’s Tre,” Mike says as he points to Green Hair. “Aaron’s in the back---”

I raise a brow, confused, having not heard such a normal name come up in his stories.

“---Cometbus,” he clarifies. 

“Ah.”

“And that’s---”

“Who’re you?”

I blink with the realization that this question is directed towards me from Dreadlocks. 

“Uh…”

He’s looking at me expectantly through what I can only assume is double vision. 

“This is Kelly,” Mike chimes in, noting my distress. “She’s my trash buddy.”

“Yeah,” I say. 

“Her mom’s late picking her up so I said I’d wait with her.”

“Well we were expecting you home, mister,” says Green… Tre with the air of an overlooked housewife. “You had us worried. Slaving over a hot stove all day for nothing…”

Dreadlocks snorts. He pulls a cigarette from the front pocket of his shirt and pops it between his lips. 

“I’m Billie,” he tells me as he lights it.

“Oh, you’re the drug dealer!”

I blurt it out so quickly there’s no possible way of stopping it. The moment the words hit the air I feel a furious blush creep into my cheeks and my stomach bottom out, but Mike lets out a bark of laughter and Billie smirks.

“Is it that obvious?” he asks with a puff of smoke. “My mom said the same thing.”

Mike says something snarky in response I don’t fully hear because I’m back to remembering that Nancy is very, very late at this point and I’m starting to worry. It’s getting dark. Did she forget about me?

“Kelly?”

Mike’s looking at me with a hint of concern and I look at him with my brows furrowed. 

“Sorry, what?”

“Did you want a ride home?” he asks. “It’s getting kinda late.”

I take in the car with its dents and scratches, the drug dealer sprung from the trunk and someone named Cometbus in the backseat, the green haired driver and the music, turned up and angry. I think of my father sitting in his office, tuned into the dispatch radio, and my mother, wherever she is. And maybe I think about my freedom a little too, and how significantly limited that freedom would be if I got in this car and they saw it, me with all my delinquent friends from the train tracks. But Mike’s right, it is getting late, and it’s a long walk home from here. If Nancy isn’t here by now there’s a good chance she’s not coming at all.

“Get in,” Mike prompts, nodding towards the backseat. “It’s not a problem.”

“We won’t even put you in the trunk,” Tre promises solemnly. 

“Well I’m not fucking getting back in,” Billie snarls as he stubs out his cigarette.

And that’s how I end up sandwiched between Cometbus, who greets me with a smile that contradicts his appearance, and drug dealer Billie Joe. My shoulders are hunched with anxiety and an uneasy quiet comes over me as they shout their way through Berkeley, each trying to be louder than the next, each with their own self-perceived valuable input. They’re talking about what they’ll do tonight, which girl is having what party, and Billie keeps reminding everyone about band practice, the new song they have to hammer out. I put together that this is a band, yes, but also a small gang, and I’m wondering again for the millionth time since meeting Mike what it would be like to have friends. 

I shout directions to Tre over the music and he whips around corners with careless ease, one hand on the wheel and the other resting casually outside the window. They’re talking about places I’ve never heard of and people I’ve never met. Mike glances back at me from the passenger’s seat and offers a small, comforting smile. I’m taking it all in. Two weeks ago I didn’t even know people like this existed. I’m thinking about the strict limits of my social bubble as we start driving down my street. The repercussions of this unplanned ride home don’t even cross my mind, I just want to know more, more about these people and their places and things, this world I’ve never had a sip of that’s just beyond my reach.

“Oh, fuck,” Cometbus deadpans as he looks out the window. Billie gives a low whistle, then looks back at me.

“Someone’s in trouble.”

There’s ice in my veins. There are no less than four police cars outside my house. My parents are standing on the sidewalk, my father in full uniform and my mother sobbing beside him, and I can physically see my world, which had just started to expand, shrink rapidly.

“I’m uh…” Tre clears his throat. “I’m just gonna let you out here.”

He pulls over to the side of the road in an attempt to be discreet when, as if the stars had aligned for this moment, the exhaust backfires. It’s like a gunshot, and it bounces around my street. My parents’ necks nearly snap they look over so quickly, and the fear I can see on their faces slowly drains out and is replaced with unadulterated rage. 

My mother is squawking my name and I’m being unceremoniously thrown from the vehicle with the hushed assurance that these boys don’t do parents well. I stumble onto the sidewalk and the door slams behind me but they can’t drive away fast enough, my dad’s lackeys are blocking off the road. Behind me, I can hear Billie blame Mike for the inconvenience. The inconvenience, I take, is me.

“Kelly!” my mother gasps, sprinting down the sidewalk to crush me in her iron embrace. Her hand smooths the back of my hair but I can feel the tension in her fingers. She spins me so my back faces the stalled car and grips me tighter when she takes note of who’s inside it. Mike, who I’m assuming is the responsible one of his motley crew, gets out of the car and offers his hand to my father, who followed my mother’s hot pursuit. 

“Hello, sir,” he says smoothly, “I’m Mike. We were just giving Kelly a ride home from---”

“From community service?” my father interrupts briskly, crossing his arms in denial of Mike’s outstretched hand. “She’s had enough trouble. She doesn’t need to be associating with people like you.”

“Dad,” I say sharply. He waves a stern finger in my direction.

“Don’t start with me, Kelly.”

They’re the first words he’s said to me in weeks and they’re laced with the intention of punishment. Mike purses his lips and lowers his hand.  
“You know,” I hear Billie The Drug Dealer sneer from behind me, “thank you would also work.”

“Excuse me?” my mother breathes, holding me tighter. I sigh.

“You forgot to pick your fucking kid up---”

“Excuse me---”

“No, no. I’m still talking---”

“Don’t,” Mike warns him. “It’s not worth it.”

He turns to me and shrugs apologetically. “See you later, Kel.”

He gets back in the car and they turn around in the middle of the street. The music starts to blast again. I wonder where they’re headed, and I wish I was headed there with them instead of standing on the sidewalk in my mother’s clutches. My parents watch them drive away with an air of shock and disdain, and then my dad turns to me and grimaces.

“Inside. Now.”

 

……………………..

I’m sitting on the couch with my arms crossed and tears pricking at my eyes while my parents take turns picking the skin off my bones. Didn’t I know better than to get in a car with four strange boys? Didn’t I think they’d be worried? How could I possibly be so stupid? Nobody addresses the reason I got in the car in the first place, which is that Nancy forgot about me, but this doesn’t seem like the time to bring that up. Just when I think it’s over my dad launches a brand new tirade about how we are the people we associate with and don’t I think I’ve caused enough trouble and do I really need to make new friends in all the wrong places???

His face starts to redden with each passionate cry of conformity and I start to drift away. I wonder where they went, those four strange boys. I wonder what they’re up to, if they went to band practice or that girl’s party. I wonder what they’re talking about, and I think about their world, and how the very parameters of their existence extend for miles past mine, and I have so many questions for them…

For starters, what’s it like to be so free?


	5. A Very Good Find, Indeed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kelly drinks a PBR.

It’s Saturday morning at Christie Road and I’m exhausted from a long week of tests and homework and all the other stresses senior year brings. I’ve been on a new level of lockdown at home post ride home from Mike and Friends. My parents have me so detached from the world outside I barely know what day it is, and I actually find myself looking forward to what has now become my only social outing. My mother drops me off with pursed lips and I see her scanning the crowd of criminals for Mike, who’s standing at the front of the line to receive his poker and garbage bag. He does a good job not acknowledging me until she drives away. She leaves me with an assurance that she will be on time to pick me up, but hasn’t given any indicators as to why she was late last week in the first place. I don’t ask. I think maybe this is one of those things I don’t really care to know. 

She waits to drive away until I’ve joined the line a safe distance away from Mike. Once I’m settled with my supplies and she’s a safe distance away, he wanders over to join me. I notice Officer Don is watching me carefully and sigh heavily. My parents must have told him to keep a closer eye on me.

“Morning!” Mike greets me, stabbing at a plastic bag. I give a weary smile. “Nice to meet your folks.”

I laugh. “Yeah, they said the same thing about you.”

“I’m sure they did. Hope you’re not in too much trouble.”

I let him know that I haven’t seen the sun in seven days and he rolls his eyes.

“Man, I don’t understand. From what I can see you’re not a bad kid. They’re way too hard on you.”

He sounds sympathetic and I appreciate his kindness more than he knows. 

“So,” I say, eager to hear about his world. “Did you go to that party? Or did you have practice?”

He smiles. Maybe I sound a little too eager. 

We spend the next couple of hours dissecting the party they ended up going to at some warehouse in Oakland, and he tells me about the people and the beer and the music. I can tell he’s doing his best to allow me to live vicariously through him, his kid trash buddy locked in her ivory tower. He tells me about the girls he likes and the music he plays, describes every sight and smell and sound, and I’m longing for a reality I didn’t know existed. I’m hanging on every word, imagining girls with blue hair in fishnet stockings behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, hearing every loud guitar. It’s so different from my world, marked by church on Sunday and college applications, the same stale dinner at the same time every day, the same empty chair at the dinner table my dead brother left behind, the same stench of disappointment in his absence and my continued existence. He asks about school, he even asks about church, but I keep pulling the conversation back around to him.

When we reach the end of the day he’s exhausted every anecdote and there’s a lurch of sadness in my stomach. I don’t want to wait a whole week to hear about his world. Maybe he sees something like desperation in my eyes as I scan for my mother’s car. Maybe he can just smell the sad on me. Whatever it is, he grabs my arm as I leave go to wait for Nancy away from him. 

“Hey,” he says in a hushed tone that makes me lean in closer. “If you.. If you ever wanna get out.”

He slips a piece of paper in my hand and my eyes widen.

“Call me. I’ll come get you.”

He’s pressed his phone number into my palm.

I feel like he’s given me the keys to the universe.

 

………………………

 

The drive home is quiet. I have the piece of paper holding Mike’s phone number tucked into my bra and I feel like I’m smuggling contraband into my house. We suffer through a silent dinner and I am sent to my room immediately after, as it has been every night since Mike drove me home. Once the door is carefully locked behind me, I pull the paper out and cup it in my hands like the holy grail. It’s seven digits scrawled on receipt paper. It doesn’t look like much, except it’s everything. It’s my out. It’s freedom. It’s a whole new world.

I can’t decide if I want to call him tonight or wait. It’s probably too risky to call tonight. Too obvious. Besides, my last escapade down the drainpipe didn’t exactly end well.. Or did it? If it hadn’t been for Jimmy from Berkeley, I wouldn’t have met Mike. I spend several sleepless nights thinking about this, wondering when would be the right time to call, or if there ever would be a right time. It’s late Thursday night when I finally muster up the courage to creep past my sleeping parents’ bedroom, down the stairs and into the kitchen to carefully pull the phone from the hook and dial the number. Anxiety ties knots in my gut while the world’s loudest dial tone comes through the small speaker. I twist the cord around my finger, heart racing, hoping to God neither of my parents wake up. 

“Hello?”

My heart jumps.

“Mike?” I whisper.

“Yeah?” 

He sounds confused.

“It’s Kelly.”

“Who? I can’t hear you.”

“Kelly,” I hiss, eyes darting to the stairs.

“Oh!” Now he’s surprised. “Hey kid!”

“... Hey.”

It occurs to me that I don’t know what else to say and a weird kind of silence settles between us until he clears his throat.

“You want me to come get you?”

There’s fresh panic in my throat. Is it really that easy?

“I… Uh…”

“I’ll be there in fifteen. Meet me on the corner.”

And he hangs up, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I’m fully panicking now. I creep upstairs as quickly as I can without making noise and change out of my pajamas. I lock my bedroom door from the inside, just in case. My heart is racing. I make a very obvious Pillow Kelly underneath my comforter in case of an intruder, and then I’m scooching down the drainpipe again, me and my sweaty palms. 

There’s a sense of liberation the minute my feet hit the grass. I’m terrified my parents will wake up and look out the window to see me sprinting down the street, lungs heaving, towards the corner. I’m only waiting for a few precious moments, trying to catch my breath, when the same car that dropped me off comes rolling around the corner. I quickly slide into the passenger’s seat and try to close the door with the least amount of noise possible. I don’t even breathe until we turn off my street.

“Relax,” Mike says once we’ve cleared the block. “You’re out.”

“I’m out,” I repeat, still shaking. “Oh my God. I’m out.”

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

I look over at him incredulously, my knight in shining sweatpants. He laughs.

“Thank you,” I say breathlessly. 

“Not a problem,” he chirps. “I figured we’d just go back to my place and chill for a little and then I’ll take you home. Cool?”

At the mention of having to eventually go home again I deflate a little, but I have to take advantage of these few golden hours of freedom while I have them. “Sure!”

As it turns out, Mike’s alternate universe takes place about fifteen minutes away from me, in the basement of a house on Ashby. He parks the car out front and pulls the keys from the ignition, gestures for me to follow him. I have approximately one million questions but none of them come out. I’m too excited to take a look inside his life. He lets us in through the back door and I take a step into the world’s dirtiest apartment. It’s small and horribly lit, smells terrible, and is littered with trash. 

It may as well be paradise.

“It’s not much,” he says, almost apologetic. “But it’s home.”

“It’s…”

Wonderful? Amazing? Fantastic? Perfect?

“... it’s great.”

I beam at him. 

“You really don’t get out much, do you?”

I open my mouth to reply and am interrupted by some kind of bubbling sound from over by the couch. I glance over and catch the sight of dreadlocks. Billie The Drug Dealer is sitting in front of the TV watching cartoons with his entire face pressed up against what looks like a long, glass tube. The bubbling stops and he pauses, tilts his head back and releases a massive cloud of smoke into the already thick air. 

“Do we have company?” he asks when he’s finished. His eyes are half shut and it looks like the couch is about to swallow him whole. 

“I sprung a jailbird,” Mike says, proud, as he walks over to take a seat next to him. I’m still hovering by the door, not sure what to do with my body. “You wanna sit?”

I nod and cross the minefield of crushed cans (Blatz is Billie Joe, I remember vaguely) to take a seat in the armchair adjacent to him. There’s several tears in the upholstery and stuffing pouring out the side. I wonder what my mother would have to say about this, and then say another prayer that she does not wake up before I get home. 

Billie passes the glass thing to Mike and he obliges. I watch him go through the same strange motions, trying to piece it together, and then I realize what they’re doing.

“Is that pot?” I ask, genuinely curious. Billie lets the question hit him before he lets loose a laugh followed by a low whistle.

“Oh, boy.”

That’s all he says. I want to press him to elaborate, but Mike passes the glass back and he falls into it face first again. I watch him curiously, and Mike catches my stare with raised eyebrows.

“Did you want…?” 

He trails off.

“Oh, no thank you,” I decline politely. Billie’s blowing smoke rings. He looks at me with his half closed eyes and stupid smile and laughs again, slow and sticky. 

“It’s good shit,” he says, and I think this is supposed to be reassuring. “Knocks you on your ass.” 

I’m trying to decide why someone would want to be knocked on their ass when Billie slaps Mike’s shoulder in an effort to get his attention, but his hand moves slowly and Mike watches him struggle to make contact with a roll of his eyes. 

“I fuckin… finished that song,” Billie drawls. I notice an abandoned acoustic guitar beside the beat up couch. “After I rubbed one out.”

He says this last part so casually Mike doesn’t even blink. I, however, feel my jaw drop slightly, which I try to recover by putting my hand under my chin, but it’s too late.

“Sorry, that was rude of me,” Billie yawns after catching my eye. 

He looks back at Mike and rests a hand on his shoulder. Mike is staring at him with something that looks like concern.

“It’s gonna fall off if you keep it up,” he mocks, then looks at the hand on his shoulder skeptically. “And I really hope you washed that hand.”

I think this might be a typical routine for Billie. He smokes pot, masturbates and writes songs. In his spare time he rides around in the trunk of Mike’s car. I think someone mentioned dumpster diving at some point. I start to wonder who Mike’s trash buddy really is. Billie’s flashing another slow, stupid smile.

“I didn’t.”

“Fuck you, dude,” Mike laughs, shaking Billie’s hand off his shoulder. “Kelly, you want a beer or something?”

I suddenly feel very cool. I wonder what my classmates are doing right now. Probably not having a casual beer with their twenty year old friends in their shady basement apartment. Probably fast asleep in their beds. “Yeah, sure.”

I’ve had a beer before. One time I drank my dad’s on accident. It was awful.

Mike gets up and leaves Billie and I to stare at each other. I hear him shuffling through the refrigerator in the small kitchen that juts out from the living room, cursing under his breath. Billie clears his throat and picks up the guitar beside him. He starts strumming something lightly, then looks back at me. I wonder how many of me he sees.

“So how old are you again?”

“Seventeen.”

He gives a another low whistle. “Man. That’s a little young for criminal behavior, don’t you think?”

And then he winks. And there’s a weird kind of… 

Heat?

In my chest?

“Nah, I’m just kidding. I was up to worse shit at your age,” he continues as he absentmindedly plucks strings, and I swallow the newly minted lump in my throat. I wonder if maybe he will wink at me again sometime soon, maybe within the next five minutes, and then I look over my shoulder for Mike, and I wonder if he also winks at Mike. How many people does he wink at, do you think?

There’s something kind of cute about Billie, is the thing. 

And I didn’t want to say anything. 

But I’m going to now.

There’s something kind of cute about Billie. I noticed it when he crawled out of Mike’s trunk. And then again when his thigh touched mine in the backseat. And then again when he fearlessly cursed out my parents. And then again, right now, with the wink. And the guitar. 

“You don’t talk much, do you?” he asks, and I notice I’ve been staring at him wordlessly.

Idiot girl.

Mike comes around the corner and passes me a cold can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I pop the lid and take a small enough sip to not really taste it. He politely pretends not to notice as he resumes his seat next to Billie on the couch and takes a deep swig of his.

“So,” Mike sighs, getting comfortable. “You wanna tell me where you trespassed, or what?”

“Trespassed?” repeats Billie, impressed. He momentarily stops strumming his guitar. “I didn’t peg you as a trespasser…”

I sigh, fold my legs underneath me, and launch into the story. Billie and Mike are a good audience, they groan and laugh at all the right parts as I ramble on. All the while, Billie plays his guitar softly underneath my story. I’m describing Jimmy from Berkeley to them when he abruptly stops, and his eyes go wide. 

“Wait, wait, wait. Jimmy? Jimmy Nelson?”

“I don’t know his last name,” I say, and I realize how that sounds after it comes out. I let someone whose last name I don’t know slip my top off outside an abandoned building. God.

“Sounds like Jimmy Nelson,” Billie cackles, slapping Mike’s shoulder. “Man. That kid’s fuckin’ trash.”

Mike joins Billie’s laughter and I feel like I’m on the outside of their circle for the first time that night. Of course they know Jimmy from Berkeley. Everyone with bad tattoos and sad boy eyes who smoke cigarettes and play guitar knows each other. 

“Wait, let me get this straight. You’re stuck picking up trash every Saturday because Jimmy Nelson felt you up?” Mike asks, and when I shrug he cracks up all over again. And Billie joins him. And I realize how ridiculous it all sounds and soon I’m laughing too, and we’re just three friends laughing in a basement over beer. 

It doesn’t even feel real.

“She’s a good find,” Billie says to Mike.

It doesn’t feel real at all.


	6. Stranger Danger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kelly lies in bed with a boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I work at a porn shop by myself and I have a lot of free time recently, so I'm just gonna keep updating whenever I want I guess? There's no update schedule here. But! I hope you're enjoying the read so far, feel free to leave comments bc I need more Green Day friends tbh

The next morning, I had never been so thankful for the continued silence my parents served me over coffee. I had successfully snuck out of the house without an arrest in sight, and even better, I had made friends, actual real life friends who told me I was welcome to come over any time. Despite my exhaustion and the two hours of light sleep I’d been able to catch, I felt something that vaguely represented happiness. I can’t even put my finger on the last time I felt something other than… nothing. 

My mother dropped me off at school without a single detection of my rebellion. If she only could’ve seen me laughing with Billie and Mike, holding my beer (which Mike ended up finishing for me)... She’d be due for a heart attack. A smug smirk tugs at the corners of my mouth as I walk down the crowded hallway to my locker, my backpack slung over my shoulder, the bags under my eyes sagging to my cheekbones. I feel so superior to everyone around me with my new older friends, surveying all these teenage kids in their natural habitat, not even noticing until I take my seat in English that all those teenage kids in their natural habitats are setting up for presentations, and my happiness drains through my pores, replaced immediately by white hot anxiety. 

How did I forget to do another project?

The panic swoops in quick. My heart starts racing, my palms start sweating, I have a vision of my future as a fast food cashier. I don’t feel myself stand up, don’t feel the stares or hear the whispers of my classmates as I run to the door, back down the hall, and out into the parking lot. The final bell sounds somewhere behind me, but I’m too busy taking big, heaving breaths to realize. I remember hearing somewhere that depression is friends with anxiety, and I think that’s what I’ve been feeling lately, or at least every time I walk into this school. I don’t even know what I want to do with my life. My parents always talk college and careers and futures I can’t even comprehend. I can barely keep track of the day in front of me.

God, I’m such a fuck up. I look back at my school, now in session, and decide I’m not going back inside. Not today. My backpack feels heavier on my shoulder now. I start walking down the street with no particular destination in mind. At some point I start crying, and I don’t stop the tears, I just keep walking, and I think about how pathetic I must look stumbling down road crying with my backpack, and that makes me cry harder. Every good feeling I thought I had is gone. I can barely recall the warmth I felt sitting in Mike’s basement, feeling like I had friends. I hung out with them one time. They probably only told me I could come around because they feel sorry for me. I’m so tired. I should’ve just stayed home.

A car whips past me, through the only puddle on the street, and splashes murky water on me.

Great.

“.... Kelly?”

I jump at the sound of my name, turning wildly to find the source of the voice. I’m covered in sewer water, weighed down by my useless backpack, and the bags under my eyes are filled with pools of mascara. Just to add to my never-ending embarrassment, or maybe this is the God my mother speaks of punishing me for every misstep I’ve ever made, Billie Joe is standing less than ten feet away from me. He’s holding a cheeseburger wrapped in tin foil and looks to be about mid chew, judging by the bulge in his cheek.

I start crying even harder. I don’t even have to try at this point.

“I have that effect on most women,” he says, words muffled by the food in his mouth. I laugh involuntarily but I’m pretty sure it just makes me look crazier. He walks toward me warily. Once he’s standing next to me, he takes in my backpack and my wet clothes and my uncontrollable sobbing. “I was gonna ask if you’re okay but I’m gonna guess you’re not.”

“No,” I sniff, “I’m not.”

“Don’t you have school or something?”

“Y-y-yes…”

“Are you skipping?” he asks. “Man, you’re full of surprises.”

“I didn’t mean to!” I wail. He raises his eyebrows. “I just.. I forgot… I forgot…”

“Hey,” he says, and his tone is more serious now. “Calm down. It’s okay.”

“N-no it’s not….”

“Breathe with me.”

And that’s how I end up taking deep breaths with a drug dealer on the side of the road. He tells me to breathe in and count to three, then breathe out. It works, and I’m surprised when I stop crying. 

“Good. See? You just need to breathe.”

He smiles at me and I remember that he’s cute and I’m instantly embarrassed again. We stand there and stare at each other for a little bit, each unsure of what to say. He plays with the foil on his half eaten burger.

“You probably don’t wanna go back to school, do you?” he asks, and I appreciate the sympathy.

“I really don’t.”  
……………………..

The house on Ashby looks different in the daylight. I can see every crack in the paint and the slight tilt of the front porch, the cigarette butts lining the path to the back door and the worn welcome mat that has YOU ARE NOT scawled above the word WELCOME. When Billie lets us into the apartment, it’s just as dark and stinky as it was a few hours before. Our beer cans are still sitting on the coffee table, which is actually just two overturned crates. I drop my backpack to the floor and sigh. Billie throws his keys onto the counter and grabs a beer from the fridge.

“You want one?”

I hesitate. It’s barely ten in the morning.

“Come on, live a little,” he grins, tossing me a can. His teeth helplessly crooked. We stand in the kitchen sipping for a minute, and I wonder what’s happening in that English class. I wonder if my mom is done with yoga yet. I wonder what my dead brother would think of me drinking a beer at ten in the morning on a school day with a guy I barely know.

“Where’s Mike?”

“Working. He likes to pretend he’s a functioning member of society,” Billie says as he slides up to sit on the counter. He eyes my wet clothes. “Do you want something to change into? You’re soaked.”

I think I read a book like this once. I’m trying to fight a furious blush. He’s cute, remember?

“Oh, no, it’s fine---”

He jumps off the counter and waves me away, heads out of the kitchen and down the hall connected to the living room. When he comes back he’s holding a t shirt and a pair of sweatpants. He hands them to me and points me toward the bathroom. I mumble my thanks and head down the hallway, lined with cracked walls accentuated by what looks like holes made by fists. The bathroom is exactly what I expect it to be, all dirty mirrors and molding tile. I slip my top over my head and slide out of my jeans, pulling on the pair of grey sweatpants and a black t shirt that reads OPERATION IVY in bold, white letters.

I use my wet top to wipe the mirror clean and run the sink to splash cold water on my face. My cheeks are red and streaked with mascara. I do my best to clean it up, but my eyes are still puffy from sobbing and lack of sleep. I run my fingers through my hair, long and brown. Boring. Just like me. My eyes and my hair are the same color. 

The color of shit.  
When I walk back into the living room Billie’s sitting on the couch smoking a cigarette. He looks up at me and smiles, pats the space next to him. I take it. He’s being incredibly kind considering he basically just met me, and I’m grateful for his company. 

“So what happened this morning?”

“I forgot to do a project.”

He scoffs. “That’s it? I thought the fucking world was ending.”

I don’t know how to explain that it is, so I shrug and play with the edge of his t shirt. He watches me carefully for a moment before he speaks again.

“You don’t have many friends, do you?”

I shake my head. 

“Is that by choice, or…”

“By force, really.”

And then I find myself launching into a tirade about my parents. He listens to me rant and smokes his cigarette. He doesn’t interrupt. Not even when he puts that cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray on the overturned crate coffee table. He just lights a fresh one. I rumble through everything, from police chiefs to pastors to every orchestrated move of my pathetic, boring life, how my parents keep me poised and perfect and focused on the future but I don’t know what the future is anymore, how I spend all my time in my room by myself, listening to records…

“What kind of records?”

It’s the first question he asks. I pause.

“I don’t know. All kinds.”

“I have some records,” he says casually. “You wanna see?”

I nod, and he leads me back to a room covered wall to wall in posters and flyers for bands I’ve never heard of. Every inch of carpet is covered with clothes and empty beer cans. What I’m assuming is his bed is a mattress on the floor with no sheet, just two pillows and a ratty old comforter. There’s a record player on the floor next to the bed. As it turns out, by some records, Billie Joe means he has crates upon crates of records, boxes of tapes, and towering stacks of CDs.   
He flops down on the bed and pulls one off the top of the stack.

“Do you have this one? It’s a classic.”

He shows me the cover and I shake my head no. 

“You ever heard of them?”

I haven’t, and he’s outraged. He tells me he’s about to change my life as he slides the record from the sleeve and lifts the needle on his record player. The music comes alive with a crackle. It’s the same splay of angry guitars I heard pounding from the car the day Mike drove me home. He slides over on his bed and tells me make myself comfortable. 

On his bed.

With him.

He doesn’t see the explosion of fear on my face because his eyes are closed and his arms are folded behind his head and he’s mouthing the lyrics to whatever song is playing. I have never laid in a bed with a boy before, let alone an older, cute boy. I did not know today would be the day. I did not come prepared. I’m standing in Billie’s room, wearing his clothes, and now I’m sliding down onto his bed despite every voice in my head screaming all at once and I’m trying to relax so I take a deep breath but I’m scared he’ll hear me let it go and ask me what’s wrong so I hold it and then I realize that’s even weirder and what if he opens his eyes and I’m laying next to him holding my breath??? 

“Kelly?”

My neck nearly snaps I look over at him so quickly. He has one eye open. I’m still holding my breath.

“You okay?”

NO?!

I let the breath go. He’s still watching me through his one open eye. He watches me slink down and settle beside him with my hands folded on my stomach. The first song roars into the second. We sink into a comfortable silence, laying next to each other while the record plays on. I think about all the times my parents told me not to talk to strangers and I wonder if they’ve ever met strangers like this...

The kind of strangers that give you warm clothes and ask if you’re okay.


	7. A Real Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kelly feels things.

There are muffled voices outside the door when I wake up and that’s when I realize something is wrong. I sit up with a jolt, eyes bursting open, heart racing, slick with sweat and look down to see Billie Joe’s Operation Ivy shirt clinging to me. Fuck. Oh, fuck. What time is it? I stumble to my feet and move to the hallway. When did I fall asleep? My mom’s supposed to pick me up from school. I’m supposed to be at school. I burst into the living room with wild, wandering eyes to see Billie and Mike sitting on the couch. 

“What… What time…”

“It’s a little after one. You fell asleep,” Billie says, eyeing me cautiously. I breathe a heavy sigh of relief. School ends at four. My life is not yet over.

“Fuck,” I sigh, clapping a hand to my forehead. “I thought I was so screwed.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you back to school on time, you little truant,” Mike grins. I glare at him. I’m still so tired. They’re passing what looks like a rolled cigarette between them. There’s a small cloud of sticky, sweet smoke above their heads. “Come sit.”

I slide into the armchair and sigh again. My heart is still pounding. 

“I put your clothes in the dryer,” Billie says as he exhales, sending a stream of smoke to join the cloud. 

“Sounds like you had a rough morning,” Mike says with a sympathetic smile.

I groan in reply. There’s a knock at the door and we all look over. Billie shouts for them to let themselves in and the door swings open. There’s a rustling of plastic bags, a clanking of plastic bottles, and the distinct smell of jasmine. Billie cracks a smile and gives Mike a knowing sort of look. 

“I brought beer,” says the new voice, sweet and feminine. I turn around and try to catch a glimpse of this new stranger but she’s not yet visible. The refrigerator door opens and closes, and then she appears.

I have never seen a girl that looks like this. Her arms are lined with tattoos, her hair is platinum blonde. She smiles at the boys through red lipstick and even her chipped tooth oozes charm, it’s just something in the way she stands. She is California sunshine in a black tank top. The dip of her cleavage is all at once dangerous and predictable, her bare midriff dips down to torn, low rise jeans. I can see the strap from her thong on her hip. I immediately feel small in comparison.

“Is it a peace offering?” Billie asks dryly. I decide I don’t like how he’s looking at her, curious and hungry. I don’t like how he bites his lip subconsciously, and I don’t like how she looks at him back, with her head cocked to the side and light dancing in her eyes.

I look down at myself in the t shirt and sweatpants. I imagine my face looks puffy and tired and maybe also a little red. I think of my hair and eyes the color of shit. And then I look at Billie, with his mop of dreadlocks and his nose ring and the tattoo on his arm that reads ALL AGES and his eyes, so green, so glassy… She crosses the living room and plops herself right in his lap.

I definitely don’t like that.

Mike looks at me and rolls his eyes. I offer a tight smile in return. She manages to tear her eyes off of Billie’s for a moment to glance over at me, wound up in a coil of nerves in the armchair, and raises an eyebrow.

“Who’s the baby?”

My face heats up. 

“Kelly, this is Ashley,” Mike says, gesturing to me. “Ashley, this is Kelly.”

“Community service Kelly?” Ashley asks. She’s lighting a cigarette and I feel my insides burn with the embers.

“That’s me,” I say, and my voice sounds so high, so childish, and I hate everything about it.

“Don’t you have like.. School?” 

She’s staring at me intently, almost as if she wants me to know I’m intruding on her space. 

“It’s a long story,” I mumble.

“Why is she wearing your clothes?” she asks, turning to Billie. She runs a hand through his hair. Her smile is equal parts questioning and demanding. Billie wraps his arms around her waist and plants a kiss on her shoulder and oh my God I hate everything right now.

“She got a little wet. Her clothes are in the dryer.”

She looks like she wants to ask another question but decides against it. Instead, she turns her smile on me.

“So how old are you sweetie?”

Everything. I hate everything. So much.

“Seventeen.”

“Do your parents know you’re here?” she coos sweetly. Billie laughs and I hate him, too. Mike looks at me apologetically. 

“They don’t,” I start. And then I stand, and there’s three pairs of eyes on me. “Actually, I should really get going.”

“Oh. Let me grab your clothes. ‘Scuse me, babe.”

Babe. 

Whatever.

Billie swoops past me and comes back with my stupid jeans and my stupid blouse that I wish was a black tank top.

“I’ll give you a ride back,” Mike offers, moving to stand. I shake him off.

“No, no. Don’t worry about it. I’ll just walk.”

He raises an eyebrow. “That’s kind of a long walk.”

“I need the exercise,” I lie. And then I turn and walk into the bathroom. Once I’m dressed, I look at myself in the mirror again. 

“He’s too old for you anyway,” I mutter to myself. “And he’s weird. And you don’t even know him.”

I tuck my hair behind my ears and breathe hard through my nose.

“Get it together, Kelly.”

When I emerge into the living room, Billie and Ashley are engaged in what looks like a vicious game of tonsil hockey and Mike is standing in the kitchen. Wow. I hate everything and I want to die. I move quickly past Mike, scooping my backpack up into my arms. He looks like he wants to ask me what’s wrong but decides he’ll save it for later.

“See you tomorrow?” I offer.

He smiles. “Bright and early.”

………………………………

It’s two in the morning. There is absolutely no reason for me to be awake, exhaustion is weighing down every one of my bones, but I can’t sleep. I keep tossing and turning and kicking off my blanket. I keep sitting up and laying back down. I’m thinking about Billie Joe. I’m thinking about Billie Joe and his tongue moving in and out of Ashley’s mouth and I’m wishing it was my mouth. I’m thinking about his Operation Ivy t shirt that smells like smoke and his record collection and the way he let me talk at him about my life. There’s this weird feeling in my stomach that I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.

I hate him. And I hate Mike for introducing me to him. And I hate myself for sneaking out of the house, and I hate that I have to be awake in three hours to go to community service, where I will see Mike and have to talk to him. I hate myself for being so curious about their little world. I just had to involve myself, didn’t I? I clearly don’t belong. 

Billie Joe’s green eyes simmering over a cigarette. Billie Joe’s calloused fingers sliding down the neck of a guitar. Billie Joe thumbing through his records. Billie Joe letting me sleep in his stupid bed. I have butterflies in my stomach and also in other places I would love to ignore. I’ve had crushes before, yeah. But not on real people. I hate him and I hate how real he is and I hate that he exists only minutes away from me in that stupid house on Ashby. 

But I can’t stop thinking about what he might taste like. Like beer and cigarettes and pot and maybe something else, something that makes him distinctly him. And Ashley. What does Ashley taste like? Why does he want to keep sipping from her like she’s some fine fucking wine? What would he taste on me? Jail. That’s what he would taste on me. Because he’s twenty and I’m seventeen and I’m nothing more than a kid who skips school and falls asleep in his bed. He may as well have been babysitting. 

And now I just feel like a dumb virgin. I always feel like a dumb virgin, but right now it’s even worse because I have never wanted to taste someone so badly, and I’ll never get the chance. Who am I kidding. I don’t even know this person. I barely even know Mike. He just took pity on me enough to try to help me out. I’m their charity case. 

Billie Joe and his Operation Ivy t shirt. 

Who the fuck is Operation Ivy anyway?


	8. A Girl in Minnesota, a Girl in the Bay...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kelly gets a gift.

“Who’s Operation Ivy?” I ask Mike over a pile of brand new trash. We’re a few hours into our shift, which we’ve spent most of next to each other in sleepy silence. He looks up at me mid poke, surprised. 

“They’re a band. A really, really good band,” he says. “They played Gilman a lot a few years ago.”

“What’s Gilman?”

“It’s like… a club. For bands.” 

“Oh.”

He cracks a smile. “Anything else?”

Everything else.

“No,” I lie, and go back to sifting through garbage. He watches my face carefully.

“Well,” he starts, “I have a question.”

What could he possibly have to ask me?

“Go for it.”

“Why’d you leave so quick yesterday?”

I sift through my thoughts for an answer, searching for something that isn’t because the sight of Billie Joe’s tongue in that girls mouth was making me physically ill.

“I… Had a thing.”

“You had a thing,” he deadpans.

“Yeah.”

“Like a school thing? Or a Billie Joe thing?”

He smirks when I pause suddenly, staring at him like I stared at the police who caught me outside that abandoned building. I start stammering, trying to pull some kind of excuse from the air around us, and he enjoys watching me struggle for a moment before he continues.

“Don’t worry about it. Everyone has a crush on Billie. It’s not a big deal.”  
I want it to not be a big deal so badly I can’t speak. I just give him my most pained, panicked expression and he laughs loud enough that several of our criminal peers glance over in annoyance. 

“How did you know,” I whisper.

“He’s my best friend,” Mike shrugs. “And it’s all over your face.”

Said face goes beat red.

“Listen, don’t sweat it. He probably won’t even notice. Ashley’s got him pretty occupied, if you know what I mean...”

I do, I do know what he means and I hate it.

“... There’s that other girl, too….”

Oh my God there’s more of them.

“...But she lives in Minnesota. He met her on tour,” Mike explains. “They keep in touch but I don’t think it’s anything serious.”

“Does Ashley know?”

Mike looks at me like I’ve mysteriously sprouted seven more heads. “Are you kidding?”

“That’s wrong,” I say simply, stabbing at the trash. My insides are boiling. It’s wrong. He’s wrong. He’s bad. He’s a bad person. He’s a bad, cute person and I hate him. Mike’s watching me viciously shove Blatz beer cans into my garbage bag and I’m getting even angrier. Not only is he bad, he litters. I don’t even know why I’m angry. It’s not like I have a chance with him or anything, I’m just Mike’s seventeen year old trash buddy, and I don’t realize I’m saying all of this out loud until I look up to see Mike staring at me in amusement.

“Tell me how you really feel.”

“Shut up,” I mumble. 

“Well, you’re right about one thing,” he sighs, and I raise my eyebrows. “He does litter.”

……………………..

When my parents call me into the living room that night, I’m still reeling from the morning’s conversation with Mike. If he could read me that easily, there’s no way Billie can’t. I’m embarrassed to even exist at the same time as him. I feel like I just dropped all my books in the hallway in front of the quarterback. I take a seat on the couch in front of my parents, who are standing, and then it registers that something is wrong. The last time they sat me down like this it was to tell me my brother died. My heartbeat starts to quicken. I can feel the sweat forming on my spine.

“Is there something wrong?” I ask from somewhere outside my body.

“We’re going away.”

I’m confused. “We… As in all of us?”

“No,” my father says. “We as in your mother and I.”

I have questions. Like. So many questions. First of all, this is the most they’ve spoken to me together in at least a month. Second, where are they going without me? Third….

My mother is holding a brightly colored brochure. She hands it to me and I take it warily. There’s a bad graphic of a cross on the front page, and a picture of some overly tanned megachurch pastor with uber white teeth and dollar signs in his eyes. I look up at them, skeptical, and wait for the explanation.

“We’re going to a Christian marriage counseling retreat,” she says briskly, “for two weeks.”

My eyebrows shoot up to my hairline.

Two weeks?

Without them?

I think I hear the angels singing.

“We leave on Monday.”

My father clears his throat. “And Grandma Jean will be coming to stay with you.”

Less singing now, more of a dull drone. But I couldn’t exactly expect them to leave me fully alone, even if I wasn’t on perpetual lockdown. 

“We expect you to be on your best behavior while we’re gone. We’ll be leaving a list of chores we want done…”

“And we have fully informed your grandmother of your recent antics,” my mother says, laying the shame on thick in case I missed it the first time. “She will be keeping a very close eye on you.”

“We’ve given her your schedule. You will not miss church, and you will not miss community service. You are still forbidden from leaving the house otherwise.”

All I can do is nod, keeping the best version of Guilt Face I can muster plastered on. I think about how much easier it will be to sneak out without them here. From what I remember my grandmother, who I haven’t seen in ages, can barely hear. I can’t wait to tell Mike, even if seeing him means seeing Billie Joe. 

“That’s all we have to say to you,” my father says. “Go back to your room.”

When I stand up, I turn from them quickly so they don’t see the smile stretching across my face.

Freedom.

**………………………………..**

**Billie Joe’s Point of View**

**………………………………...**

I don’t know how we get anything done.

I’m glued to the fucking couch, like really stuck. I could probably die here and nobody would even find me underneath all the bullshit we keep in this apartment. I think we have more garbage than furniture. I’m stoned. So stoned. So tired. Mike’s stoned too. Tre is here, I think. I don’t know. I don’t even know what day it is. Maybe Sunday? Adrienne usually calls on Sundays. I wonder if Ashley is still in my bed where I left her. I don’t want her here if Adie ends up calling. I would prefer if no one was here but it’s pretty impossible to be alone these days. We had practice for a couple hours before, ran a bunch of new songs for the tour coming up as soon as Mike gets off community service. He had to go and get caught with my weed and throw us all off our schedules, push the tour back and fuck everything up. We’ve got a couple shows coming up around town, though. Gotta stay on top of our game.

I think I’m dying.

“Beej?”

If I had the energy to be surprised I would be. Tre’s right next to me on the couch. How long has he been there?

“Is it Sunday?” I ask, groggy. He squints at me.

“I don’t fuckin’ know…”

“Mike knows,” I mumble to myself. “He always knows what day it is…”

“It’s Sunday,” Mike yawns as he walks through the living room from down the hall. He takes one look and me and Tre sinking further into the couch and scoffs. 

“Are we expecting a phone call from the Midwest?” Tre teases, and I shush him. 

“Ashley’s here, asshole.”

“No she’s not, she left two hours ago,” Mike calls from the kitchen.

“Oh. Then yeah. We are.”

Tre snorts. “You gonna talk about human sexuality---”

I light a cigarette from the pack someone left on the coffee crate table. “All kinds. All kinds of kinds…”

We dissolve into slow, stupid laughter. And then the phone rings, and my ears perk up and I yell for Mike to answer and he does, and I wait for him to call me over but he doesn’t and now I’m annoyed, long distance calls are expensive and I don’t even know why he’d want to talk to Adrienne… I listen to him talk and laugh for a minute and then he hangs up. I guess it wasn't her. He comes into the living room and throws himself into the chair. I look at him questioningly.

“Oh, that was Kelly.”

“Trash Kelly?”

“Yeah. Her parents are going away for a couple weeks.”

“She coming over later?” I ask, and I’m watching his face for any change in expression. I think he might be into her or something. She’s young, though. Like really young. He shrugs and relaxes into the chair.

“Probably not. Maybe tomorrow.”

“You into that?” Tre asks, and I’m glad it was him and not me.

He pulls a face.

“Nah. She’s a cool kid, though. I feel bad for her. Don’t think she has friends.”

“I love charity,” Tre sighs. 

“Come on, dude. She’s not charity. She’s just… Lonely.”

I nod. Mike’s a good guy. 

Much better than me.

Tre, however, has a tendency to say what we’re all thinking.

“Great ass.”

“Yeah.”

“For sure.”

“Jailbait ass,” I remind everyone. 

“We’re only three years older,” Tre says diplomatically. 

“She’s in high school…”

“I didn’t say I was gonna fuck her…”

“Nobody is fucking Kelly,” Mike says. 

“If she was a little older I would,” Tre adds, just for clarification. “Like seventeen and a half…”

I start laughing. Mike rolls his eyes.

“I wouldn’t,” I say. “She looked like she was gonna pass out just laying next to me the other day. Can you imagine if I whipped my dick out?”

“When was she laying next to you?”

Now they’re both looking at me for an explanation. 

“When she fell asleep. We were laying in my bed listening to records and she passed out, so I came out to fuck around with that new song---”

“You could’ve listened to records literally anywhere else.”

“He wanted her in his bed,” Tre purrs. “You predator…”

“I am not a predator---”

“Man. He’s got a girl in Minnesota, he’s got a girl in the Bay….”

“....He’s got a girl in high school…”

Now they’re laughing and I’m rolling my eyes.

“I was just trying to be friendly!”

Mike stops, looks at me with that smug face of his I hate so much. “Have you ever noticed that whenever you try to be ‘friendly’ it involves your bed?”

I try to find the words to defend myself but I’m stoned and stupid and he’s like… A little bit right. 

“You even put her in your clothes…”

Tre’s eyes go wide. “Classic Billie move.”

“I don’t have moves---”

They’re laughing even harder now and I’m starting to get pissed. Tre’s eyes flutter half shut and he leans back in the couch, doing his best impression of me. He’s slouched over and holding an imaginary cigarette. 

“You stayin’ over?” he demurs. “Here, wear my Operation Ivy shirt….”

Mike roars with laughter. “That’s the one he gave her!”

Tre looks at me with something like disappointment. “Man, you make it too easy.”

My mouth opens adamantly, I want to try to defend myself but now Mike is slouched over and holding his imaginary cigarette and I am just being totally victimized.

“You comin’ to the show tonight? I wrote this song about you.”

“Oh, fuck off---”

I’m cut off by the phone ringing. I move to stand and both their eyes are on me.

“It’s one of his many women,” Tre says to Mike, then looks back at me. “Well, go on.”

I want it to be Adrienne but I really hope it’s not just so I can throw it in their faces. I walk over to the phone without looking back at them and pull it from the handle.

“Hello?”

God damnit.


	9. Grandma in the Getaway Car

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kelly gets sprung.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I'm gonna start switching POVs to keep it interesting, I started doing it a little last chapter. I know changing format nine chapters in isn't exactly writer-ly, but there's no rules in fanfic, are there?

Kelly

My mother picks me up from school on Monday with her car packed full of church camp essentials, things like toothpaste and bibles and sensible shoes. She seems pretty uptight for someone who’s about to go on vacation, even if it is a “couples counseling retreat”. I didn’t even know my parents needed counseling. I think maybe it has something to do with me, and I feel a little guilty. They’ve got a delinquent daughter and a dead son. It can’t be easy. 

When we get home, there’s a new car in the driveway that I assume is Grandma Jean’s. Grandma Jean is my dad’s mom, and I always got the feeling she doesn’t like my mom much. Maybe that’s why she’s so uptight. We go inside and my dad is pulling his suitcase down the stairs. Sitting on the couch, wrapped in a fur coat, is my grandmother. 

What I should have mentioned is Grandma Jean is a former actress, and though she never received the critical acclaim she felt she deserved, she carries the kind of old Hollywood elegance you pair with champagne and Chanel no 5. Her lipstick is red and her nails are long and when she sees me, she smiles.

“There’s my granddaughter.”

Her voice is raspy from years of chain smoking long, thin cigarettes. 

“Hi Grandma.” 

I make sure I say it a little loud so she can hear me. 

“That’s all? I haven’t seen you in over a year and all you have to say is hi grandma?” she scoffs. I feel my mother inhale sharply from beside me. “Come over here.”

I cross the space between us and she stands to pull me into a tight hug. It’s true, I haven’t seen her since my brother’s funeral. I feel like my mom made an extra effort to not have her around, though that isn’t my place to say so I’ll just mind my business. I wonder why they even asked her to stay with me. They probably couldn’t get anyone else to do it. 

“Nancy, what are you feeding this girl? She’s skin and bones.” 

A tight smile from my mother, but no reply.

“Alright, looks like we’re all set,” my dad says, quick to separate them as the tension grows. 

“Right,” my mother says briskly. She turns to me. “Be good for your grandmother.”

“Don’t try anything,” my dad adds. What kind of kid do they think I am? The kind that sneaks out to sit in a basement with her derelict friends? 

Imagine that.

“Thank you, mom,” he says to my grandma, who waves him off.

“Go, go. Praise the Lord, and all that.”

I almost laugh, but the look on my mother’s face stops me. I don’t even dare to breathe until I hear their car start and clear the driveway. When it’s just me and Grandma Jean, she’s the first to heave a sigh of relief.

“Your mother,” she starts as she fishes around in the handbag sitting beside her, “sucks all the air out of the room.”

I think I’m in a little bit of shock as I watch her light a cigarette inside my house. I knew she didn’t like my mom, but I don’t remember it ever being this…. pronounced. 

“Jesus,” I mumble to myself.

“Jesus what?”

Now I’m definitely in shock.

“You heard that?”

“I hear everything. Don’t tell your mother. She thinks I’m deaf.”

She takes a drag of her cigarette. I’m pretty sure my mouth is wide open.

“Have you never heard of selective hearing, dear?” 

Does this mean I won’t be able to sneak out at all? I should’ve known this was too good to be true.

“Now, your father’s filled me in on all of your little antics,” she starts, and I groan inwardly. Here we go. “And has specifically instructed me to keep you under lock and key due to your criminal behavior.”

She eyes me carefully. I don’t notice I’m holding my breath until she tells me to let it go.

“Let’s discuss the terms of your imprisonment, shall we?”

****

**Billie Joe**

It’s Van Halen Monday here at the apartment. That’s not usually a thing, but today it is. I’m ripping through Runnin’ with the Devil on my air guitar when I knock over the garbage can and send crushed beer cans flying all over the kitchen floor. I groan, Mike laughs from his position sitting on the counter, I hear Tre cackle from the living room because if Mike’s laughing and I’m not it means I fucked up. Once I’ve got everything picked up and shoved into a garbage bag that’s about to burst open at the bottom, I throw a cigarette in my mouth and head outside to throw it in the dumpster. I’ve got the trash in one hand and the cigarette in the other when a car I’ve never seen pulls up outside. There’s people that live upstairs, and I assume it’s one of their friends and until I see Baby Kelly (that’s what we’ve taken to calling her around here), slide out of the passenger’s seat. And now I’m confused. There’s an older lady in the driver’s seat and she’s waving her out of the car. Is someone dropping her off here? Seriously? I’m under the impression she’s not allowed within a fifty root radius of us.

She gets out of the car and spots me standing on the sidewalk, then immediately turns back to the car like she wants to jump back inside but the lady is already driving away. Baby Kelly has no choice but to turn and face me. We’re standing there staring at each other when I clear my throat. 

“We have to stop meeting like this.” I crack a smile and she laughs, making direct eye contact with her shoes. 

“I told her not to drop me off here, I thought you guys might be like, out or busy or something but she wouldn’t listen she just---”

“Woah, woah, woah. Slow down.”

I feel bad for her, man. She’s just a kid and her parents are so tough on her. It’s like she has no understanding of social situations at all. I’ve never met someone so awkward and anxious except for like… Me. Her face turns red and she’s stumbling over her words and she keeps looking down the street hoping the car will pull back around.

“Who dropped you off?”

“My grandma.”

She catches my look of surprise and launches into an explanation.

“Wait, let me get this straight. She’s letting you off lockdown?”

“She told me to have fun,” she says, shrugging. She’s a little calmer now that she’s explained her sudden appearance on my sidewalk. I look at the cigarette in my hand that’s smoldered out and remember my pack inside is empty.

“You wanna come with me to grab smokes?” I ask. “Now that you’re a free woman you can be seen in public with us.”

She smiles. Laughs. And we start walking.

****

**Kelly**

“You can’t even say hi?”

I’m standing in 711 with Billie Joe, feeling very cool, holding the Slurpee he bought for me because I’m a child and he’s placating me, when the question comes like a bullet from behind us. He’s standing at the counter handing over his money (a wad of singles he pulled from his pocket), and I see his shoulders tense before he turns. There’s a girl, of course there’s a girl, with streaks of blue in her dark hair, looking very angry, and I’m assuming she knows him in a biblical sense because her nostrils flare when he breathes and she really wants to know why he can’t even say hi.

“I, uh… I didn’t see you,” he mumbles, and she snorts, and I sip the Slurpee slowly.

“You didn’t see me. That’s cute. You sure saw a lot of me three weeks ago.”

He looks flustered and I feel bad but I’m too intrigued to rescue him.

“But Ashley doesn’t know about that, does she?” she asks with a sneer. “It would be a shame if someone told her…”

He groans. “Can we please not do this here…”

“You don’t get a choice,” she snarls. And then she looks at me and I shrink under her withering stare. “And who the fuck is this?”

Billie looks at me quickly and then blurts out, “My cousin. My little cousin, she’s visiting from…. Pomona.”

Great. I’ve been promoted from Trash Girl to Baby Cousin. 

“Visiting from Pomona,” Purple Streaks repeats. “Ok, Billie Joe. Whatever you say.”

She moves to the door, but not before turning to deliver her final line:

“If I see Ashley at Gilman on Friday, I’m telling her everything.”

She leaves, and Billie sighs heavily.

“What was that?” I ask, a little too excited. He glares at me as he grabs his smokes off the counter. The cashier looks at him sympathetically as we move outside and he immediately rips the pack open. 

“That was Dana,” he mumbles with a cigarette between his lips. I watch him strike a match and light it. 

“She seems….”

“Like a fucking handful? Yeah.”

We start walking back towards the house.

“What’s happening at Gilman on Friday?”

“My death, apparently.”

“No, seriously.”

“We have a show. You should come.”

I’m excited all over again. I finally get to see the place where the things happen. To mask this, I spin the conversation back towards Dana.

“So Ashely doesn’t know about Dana…”

“No…” he trails off, suspicious. 

“But Adrienne doesn’t know about Ashley or Dana….”

“No, no. Adrienne knows about everyone,” he says, and his tone changes when he talks about her and I feel something boil in my belly about it but I ignore it and press on. “We aren’t exclusive or anything we’re just… Friends.”

Phone sex friends, according to Mike.

“How do you know about Adrienne, anyway?”

The suspicion is back.

“Mike told me.”

“Oh yeah? What else did Mike tell you?”

I look at him and realize he’s looking at me and he’s smirking and I remember he’s cute again and I stumble over a crack in the sidewalk. He reaches out and grabs my elbow to steady me and there is something resembling electricity in his fingertips and wow I hate myself all over again. 

“You’re right,” I blurt. “Dana looks like a handful.”

“Yeah, well. I like girls who are a handful, apparently,” he says with a puff of smoke.

I want to stop myself but I can’t. “....is Adrienne a handful?”

He looks thoughtful. “No. She’s not. I’m the handful in that scenario.”

“Sucks she’s so far away,” he says. And then he looks at me again. “I’d marry that girl.”

It’s official.

I want to die.


	10. Peas Over Concrete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kelly wears lipstick.

**Kelly**

Billie Joe is kissing me. He’s kissing me and it’s kind of like Jimmy from Berkeley but better and he tastes like smoke and rain, and his fingers are in my hair and he’s grating his teeth against my bottom lip and when I wake up I can almost feel his body pressed against mine but it’s just me in my twin sized bed and my grandma is yelling at me to get up because I’m going to be late for school.

And that’s how the morning starts.

It makes me flustered, this dream of Billie pressing his stupid lips against my neck and smirking at me in that smug Wise Punk way of his. It makes me flustered in a way I can’t tell my grandma about when she asks me why my face is so red. I tell her I don’t feel well and it’s not even a lie, I don’t feel well. I don’t feel well at all. I spent last night sitting on Billie and Mike’s couch watching them write songs and smoke weed and I spent the whole time wondering what it would be like to have his tongue in my mouth. Mike caught me staring too and kept giving me this stern, paternal look I just wanted to slap off his face. 

Grandma takes my temperature and I’m just sweaty enough to get a free pass out of school to rest, but apparently she has better things to do than tend to my sickbed, like bingo and bridge and whatever it is she and her gang of old ladies get up to on Tuesdays. She leaves me laying in bed with a hot water bottle and two aspirin on my nightstand. She mentions getting me a glass of water but never comes back.

It occurs to me that Grandma is kind of a loose cannon leaving me alone like this. If my parents knew, they’d flip. If they knew she’d straight up taken me to Billie and Mike’s apartment they would dismember her. She didn’t even ask questions when she picked me up, just if I had a good time. But I have nothing specifically debaucherous scheduled today. Actually, I intend to spend the entire day staring at my ceiling and daydreaming about Billie Joe kissing my neck. 

The problem is, things never turn out how I plan them. 

I want to spend all day sighing and rolling around in my bed and stewing in my sexual frustration, maybe half-heartedly shove my hand in my pants and try to rearrange my own guts out of desperation just to give up and cry halfway through because of my unsightly virgin status, but I don’t. I get up and shower and maybe do a little bit of sighing there instead, then flop back down on my bed and end up bored. It’s not even noon. I have a whole day off of school. I feel like if I stay in my bed like I’m supposed to I’m wasting all this precious freedom, and I’m pretty sure Grandma wants me to sneak out anyway. I’m pretty sure she winked on her way out of my room. So I get up and wring out my wet hair and pull on a t shirt and some jeans but then I stop again to stare at myself in the mirror on my closet door.

I wish I was sexy.  
Ashley is sexy. Even the girl who yelled at Billie at 711 was sexy. And it’s not even just how they look, it’s how they act. It’s how they swing their hips and narrow their eyes and make dangerous conversation, how they slide onto laps and lick their lips and flip their hair. They all smoke cigarettes and own fishnet stockings and have been kissed by boys I can’t even dream of kissing. They’ve been touched and admired and lusted after. I’m just a seventeen year old girl in a t shirt, soaked from a puddle a car drove through. The literal wet blanket.

I want to be sexy.

I lift up my shirt and expose my belly, which is flat but not as flat as Ashley’s, and my unpierced belly button which looks significantly less cool. And then I tie the shirt so a thin strip of skin shows above my jeans and I feel older and cooler and maybe like, a little bit sexy. I let my hair down, still a little damp, and let it fall over my shoulders. My face, round and unassuming, could stand a little makeup, which I never wear. So I break out a tube of mascara I’ve had sitting at the bottom of my closet for way too long and brush it on and it makes my poop eyes look bigger. Sexier? Maybe? I think I have lipstick somewhere, and that’s how I end up with brown poop lips the same color as my brown poop eyes and somehow it works and I feel confident and different and… I’m going to call Mike and see what he’s up to.

It turns out he’s not up to much so he comes and picks me up, and when I slide into the car next to him he stares at me with raised eyebrows.

“Did you do something different with…. your face?” he asks as he pulls around my street.

“Not really,” I lie. And he accepts that lie, and I’m grateful.

“So why aren’t you in school again?”

“I had a fever this morning, but I feel better now,” I say as I lean my head against the headrest. “Is Billie home?”

The question falls out before I can stop it and then my face is red and I’m pretty sure that trusty fever comes crawling back when Mike belly laughs.

“Sorry to disappoint you and your new face and everything---”

Oh wow I want to die.

“---but he stayed at Ashley’s last night and hasn’t come home yet.”

Super want to die. So much death.

 

Maybe Mike can smell the overwhelming urge to expire on me because he changes the topic pretty quickly and starts talking about how stoked he is that I’m coming to their show on Friday. I’m excited too, I’ve heard so much about their band and I can’t wait to actually see them in action as opposed to dueling acoustic guitars stoned on their couch, but his excited chatter falls off as we pull up to the house and another car is screeching to halt in front of us. 

The passenger door bursts open and Billie Joe tumbles shirtless onto the sidewalk. He’s yelling something at the driver, his arms are up to cover his face as his missing clothes come flying out after him. Mike whistles low and parks, tells me to enjoy the show, so I settle in. Ashley emerges from the driver’s side, tits spilling out of a black tank top, and she is screaming. She’s throwing shit at Billie, whatever she can grab, and I can hear them shouting at each other but can’t exactly make out the argument. They race around to the trunk, trying to beat each other to whatever the punch is, but Ashley shoves him out of the way. I see frustration and something like fear bubble up on Billie’s face as she pops the trunk open. Now it looks like he’s pleading with her, both his hands are tangled in his mess of black hair and she’s holding what looks like a guitar over her head---

“Nope! No no no,” Mike’s saying as he yanks his seatbelt off and bolts out of the car, leaving me to observe the mess. Now he’s joining the fray, and Ashley spins on him. Her eyes are wild and full of rage and she’s holding Billie’s guitar over her head, bright blue and covered in stickers. It looks like Billie’s entire life is flashing before his eyes, which are fixed on the guitar as Mike and Ashley start getting into it. But whatever Mike is saying seems to be calming her and now she’s taking big, heaving breaths. She thrusts the guitar into Mike’s chest with fantastic dramatics and starts crying. This is like Shakespeare. I can’t help myself, I crack my door open.

“Get out of my fucking face, Armstrong!” she spits at Billie, and I register that, Armstrong, I didn’t know his last name. Billie Joe Armstrong. “I never want to fucking see you again---”

“Sounds great to me!” he snarls, wrenching his guitar away from Mike. “Fuck this…”

And he starts storming up the path to the back door. Ashley gets back in her car and slams the door behind her, tires screeching as she pulls away. Mike looks back at me, shrugs, then motions for me to follow him.

“In there?” I mumble, pointing to the house where I’m pretty sure Billie Joe Armstrong is constructing a bomb.

He looks at me, looks at the house, and sighs.

**Billie Joe**

“FUCK---”

When I open my eyes my fist is lodged in the wall and when I pull it out my knuckles are bleeding and when I walk into the living room clutching my hand Mike and Baby Kelly are staring at me from the kitchen. He looks almost bored, she looks terrified, and I can’t pay attention to either of them because my heart is still racing from seeing Blue dangling five feet above concrete. I push past them to the sink and run my hand under cold water, a low hiss escaping my lips. 

“What happened?” Mike asks and I glare at him over my shoulder. He raises his hands defensively. Baby Kelly is standing in the corner staring at my bleeding hand.

“She’s crazy,” I mumble, reaching for the dish towel. I wrap it around my hand and hold it to my chest. 

“Yes, but what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything---”

“What did you do?” he asks again. Kelly’s got a small smile on her face. 

“What’re you smiling about?” And that shuts her down pretty quickly. Her face flushes beat red and I smirk, satisfied. “Did you do something to your face?”

She turns an even deeper red. “No, I just---”

“You have makeup on.”

She’s shocked that I’ve noticed what I’m sure she thought was a minor addition, but the Baby Kelly I’ve gotten used to is fresh faced and innocent and this new Baby Kelly has brown lipstick and a belly shirt. I look at Mike with raised eyebrows and he shrugs in return. And then she does something that surprises both of us, which is step forward and take my hand in hers, applying pressure. I watch her carefully but she doesn’t meet my eyes, she’s making herself busy tightening the towel and asking if we have ice. Mike, who’s just as surprised as me, grabs a bag of peas from the freezer that’s been sitting there basically since we moved in. She takes it from him and instructs me to sit. I’m so shocked from this sudden change in attitude that I hop up on the counter. 

There’s the sound of screeching tires outside and we all look up. I can literally feel myself getting pissed again. I cannot believe this crazy bitch would come back after almost smashing my fucking guitar. I go to jump off the counter but Mike stops me.

“No, stay where you are,” he says with his best impression of responsibility. “I’ll handle it.”

I watch him leave and then it’s just me and Kelly in the kitchen. I don’t say anything to her, I just watch her unwrap the towel from my hand. She runs it under the water and then makes herself busy gently wiping the drying blood away. When she’s mostly cleaned it up, she grabs a clean dish towel (hard to come by around here) and rewraps my hand, then presses the frozen peas against my knuckles. She’s standing between my legs and she doesn’t look nervous at all. Actually, she looks kind of bored. 

“Thanks,” I mumble. She meets my eyes and that familiar pink glows in her cheeks.

“No problem. My brother used to get in a lot of fights,” she says. Her hand is still on the peas. “Keep the pressure on it.”

She turns around to wash her hands and I can’t help myself, I get a full visual of her ass and maybe I tilt my head and stare a little bit and then I remember she’s fucking seventeen and snap my eyes to the ceiling. Would it be inappropriate to ask her when her birthday is? Also, when did Baby Kelly get kind of hot?

“Do you guys have alcohol?”

“What kind of alcohol?”

 

“The kind to clean cuts,” she says dryly. I offer a half smile.

“We only carry vodka here.”

She shrugs, wiping her wet hands on her jeans. “It’ll work.”

I tell her where it is and she helps herself to the bottle, then comes back around to unwrap my hand. “This is gonna sting.”

She splashes my knuckles with the vodka and I wince, involuntarily curse. She shushes me under her breath, but she’s not annoyed. She’s not bothered. She’s calm and comforting and patient and seventeen. So seventeen. Why do I have to keep reminding myself she’s seventeen? The stretch of skin that’s showing above her jeans is looking a little too inviting. She’s pressing the towel to my knuckles again and replacing her hand with the peas and raising her eyes to meet mine.

“I think you’re gonna make it,” she says, and I laugh.

“Thank you, nurse.”

She’s not blushing anymore, she’s just looking at me with those big brown eyes and there’s a piece of stray hair I almost reach out and tuck behind her ear and then I remember she is seven-fucking-teen, she is Mike’s trash buddy from community service, she is severely, significantly off limits and while I am grateful for her assistance I am not going to bend her over my kitchen table any time soon. But here she is, standing between my legs pressing frozen peas to my bloody knuckles, and I can’t help but think she doesn’t stand this close to her brother while she’s cleaning him up. She’s too close to my mouth, which her eyes fall to, and you’ve got to be fucking kidding me with this little girl staring at my mouth like this… Would it really be so bad if I leaned forward and kissed her? Is this just me being slutty again? I’m really not that much older than her, and Mike said she’d be eighteen soon, and holy fuck she’s biting down on her bottom lip so close to my face---

“She just wanted---”

Mike comes storming into the kitchen and Kelly jumps back and I feel like I’ve just been caught red handed. He looks between us, all raised eyebrows and judgement.

“I’m sorry, did I interrupt something?”


	11. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Sorry for not updating in forever. This is a short chapter but I'm just trying to get back into the swing of it. Enjoy!

**Kelly**

I back up off of Billie so fast I knock over the pile of dishes stacked up on the counter and they shatter with a crash. It’s a momentary distraction I make myself busy with, blushing furiously as I dip down to clean up my mess. I don’t see Mike staring at Billie accusingly and Billie raising his hands in a questionable defense, all I see are Billie’s cloudy eyes as I bit down on my lip so close to his face, inches away from self fulfilling my own prophecy. I wonder what it would have been like if I’d closed the gap, if I had just gone ahead and kissed his stupid lips. What would it have been like to have Billie’s tongue sliding past my teeth? Great, now I’m blushing harder and I’m pretty sure they’re both staring at me.

“Here, let me help you,” Mike says and joins me on the floor picking up the shards of his dishes. I refuse to meet his stare, the heat is radiating off my face. Billie jumps off the counter, still clutching the peas to his hand.

“What did she want?”

“The last word,” Mike says, rolling his eyes. Billie scoffs and walks out of the kitchen, probably to plop down on the couch and light a cigarette with his good hand. Mike glances behind him to make sure he’s cleared the room before he grabs my arm.

“What the hell was that,” he hisses.

I don’t know what to say so I start fumbling over a few choice words, including I don’t know and I’m sorry, with a little bit of it was an accident. He shakes his head and starts shoving the broken plates in a garbage bag he pulls from under the sink.

“Outside, now.”

I follow him out to the garbage can and almost think I’ve escaped a lecture when he turns, sighs, and crosses his arms.

“Listen…”

“He’s too old for me, he’s too---”

“Listen. Nevermind him being too old for you, three years isn’t that much difference and if you were eighteen this would be a different story---”

“I’ll be eighteen in two weeks---”

“Kelly, just listen. Nevermind him being too old for you. He’s just not… He’s not the kind of guy you need to get mixed up with right now.”  
“What do you mean?”

“Billie is my best friend. He’s a good guy. But we need to focus on our music right now, and we would be touring if I hadn’t gotten landed in community service. He’s like my brother and I know what he’s doing right now.”

And now I’m confused. “And what is he doing right now?”

“He’s trying... It’s hard to explain. He’s pissed that we had to take time off from the road and he’s trying to distract himself with girls. It’s not gonna work, but he’s gonna do whatever he needs to do not think about Adrienne.”

There it is, that now familiar sinking in my gut. “Oh.”

“Man,” Mike sighs and kicks at a rock on the sidewalk, “He really fell for her. The distance wouldn’t be so bad if we were touring right now…”

“...But you’re not.”

“Exactly.”

And now I know I’m gonna start asking all the questions I don’t want answers to, but I do anyway. “Where’s she from?”

He looks a little surprised. “Minnesota. Met her a couple years ago at a basement show.”

“That’s far.”

“It is. But they talk all the time. They see other people, it’s not serious, but I think they both know it would be if she was here.”

I don’t know what to say to this so I just kick some rocks on the sidewalk.

“You got a little crush, don’t you?”

I look up at Mike and he’s smiling with something like sympathy. I want to deny it but we’re friends now, Mike and I.

“A little bit,” I admit. 

“Is that why you have makeup on today?”

The blush creeps back up into my cheeks and Mike laughs, swinging an arm around my shoulders. We start walking back towards the house and he starts talking about the show on Friday, the one I’m going to. 

“You know,” he says as he pushes the back door open, letting us into the apartment, “since we have garbage duty on Saturday morning and your grandma doesn’t seem to mind, you can stay over Friday night if you want.”

“Seriously?” I ask, trying not to sound too hopeful.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll take us there and I’ll take you home after.”

“Okay, cool.” Oh my God. A sleepover at a boy’s house. 

“We’re probably gonna have a little party after anyway.”

Oh my God. A party at a boy’s house. I nod and play cool, follow him into the living room where Billie is sucking on a joint on the couch. He passes it to Mike wordlessly, blowing smoke into the already thick air and Mike hits it, then instinctively spins and offers it to me. 

“Oh, shit, sorry…”

“No, I.. Uh. I wanna try.”

His eyebrows shoot up and he looks at me like he’s asking if I’m sure, but I feel this sense of freedom knowing my parents can’t creep up on me at any minute so I shrug and take the joint from his fingers. Billie watches me carefully with something like amusement and I slide in to the chair beside the couch. The joint is hot between my fingers and I lift it to my lips curiously. Mike collapses next to Billie on the couch and now they’re both staring at me. I move it away from my lips, butterflies swarming in my stomach.

“I don’t know what to do,” I confess.

“Just like… Hit it,” Billie says unhelpfully. I look down at the joint, defeated.

“Like a cigarette,” Mike says, then realizes I’ve never had one of those either. “Oh…”

I bring it back up to my mouth again and close my lips around the end that isn’t smoldering, then gently breathe in. Nothing happens. They’re staring at me like I’m a circus act. 

“Suck it like a dick,” Billie offers. Mike rolls his eyes. 

“I’ve never.. I don’t…” I’m flustered and his eyes widen.

“...Oh.”

“I’m gonna try again,” I say with confidence.

“That’s the spirit,” says Mike.

When it meets my lips again I pull harder and suddenly my mouth is full of thick smoke. My eyebrows shoot up and I’m sure I’m sweating. I look over at them quickly for help.

“Inhale and hold it,” Billie cracks a smile. “For like five seconds.”

I try and fail, coughing viciously. Billie applauds, bringing his hands together slow and sloppy, and Mike jumps up to get me a glass of water. When I stop coughing after what feels like years, my breath comes in shallow waves and my cheeks are burning. Mike hands me the water and I take it gratefully. 

“I don’t feel anything.”

“Some people don’t feel anything the first time they smoke. Some people get really stoned. Take some more.”

I don’t know how long we sit in the basement passing around the joint. Long enough for Billie to roll a fresh one, and we start passing that around too. We talk about everything and nothing, and I get good at taking small sips from it. My legs are swung over the arm of the chair and I’m taking another pull and it feels natural and almost fun. I feel soft. And stupid.

Tired.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! I am a retired Green Day fic writer who was feeling a little nostalgic and poked around for some stuff to read but didn't find a lot that really sucked me in, so I decided to give the fandom the fic it deserves as my parting gift. I hope you guys have as much fun reading as I'm having writing. Feel free to leave some feedback; I'm only in it for the comments, anyway.


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